Growing up in the 90s, most of us who were raised by boomer parents often feared our fathers. Our fathers were the stereotypical ‘head of the households’. Our naughty days and bad report card days were met with “wait until your father gets home!” In those days, dads were meant to be feared.

What may have started as a parenting tactic to having one strict parent in the home led to a generation of people who pulled away from their parents because of the trauma and abuse they endured.

To be fair, not all strict parents unleashed a lifetime of trauma on their children. Some just sternly scared their kids off the dangers of the world. For instance, when we failed or played sound a lot, our dad would threaten us with the possibility of being taken off school to sell viazi and mahambri by the roadside. It is something my parents would never have done, but to my undeveloped prefrontal cortex self, it scared me straight into not failing.

The other day, I realised that in my household, we have a good cop, bad cop scenario, too, when my husband told my son that if he did something I would be upset and punish him. I remember just blurtling out, “Why I gotta be the bad cop?”

The reality is my husband is the soft cop. Our four-year-old would use his father’s body like a trampoline, and my husband would suffer in silence. I would have to intervene because my husband is right around the corner from his forties as his body regularly reminds him. My husband will feed junk to our son in the morning just to have a peaceful and quiet time. Lately, he would also look hurt if I told off my toddler for doing something wrong in a harsh tone.

Of course, I play the bad cop because I am the primary parent who instils values, shapes behaviour and reinforces principles. I also manage their nutrition and health. My husband just plays with cars and drives the tot to his favourite activities. I had to tell my husband that although his personality is softer and is highly unlikely to be the disciplinarian in the household, he still had to teach boundaries to the children and hold his ground.

In most cases, I don’t mind being the bad cop in the household because it is my job to raise these boys into upstanding members of society. Even as I hold them close now, I know that in a few short years, I will have to release them into the big bad world, and they will have to survive on their own. My job between now and then is to get them ready for the moment they fly out of the nest.